Khazars

Khazar Khaganate
Xəzər Xaqanlığı
c. 650–969
Khazar Khaganate, 650–850
Khazar Khaganate, 650–850
StatusKhazar Khaganate
Capital
  • Balanjar (c. 650–720)
  • Samandar (720s–750)
  • Atil (750-c. 965–969)
Common languagesKhazar
Religion
Khagan 
• 618 – 628
Tong Yabghu
• 9th century
Bulan
• 9th century
Obadiah
• 9th century
Zachariah
• 9th century
Manasseh I
• 9th century
Benjamin
• 10th century
Aaron
• 10th century
Joseph
• 11th century
Georgius Tzul, or Georgios
History 
• Established
c. 650
• Sack of Atil of Sviatoslav I of Kyiv
969
Area
850 est.3,000,000 km2 (1,200,000 sq mi)
900 est.1,000,000 km2 (390,000 sq mi)
Population
• 7th century
1,400,000
CurrencyYarmaq
Preceded by		Succeeded by
Turkic Khaganate
Old Great Bulgaria
Cumania
Pechenegs
Kievan Rus'

The Khazars were a semi-nomadic Turkic people. They formed an empire called Khazaria in Russia from the 6th to 10th century CE. They are said to have originated from the Western Turkic Khaganate of the Eurasian steppe, a vast plain encompassing Central Asia and southeastern Europe.

Overview

Khazaria was an international trading center. It was a hub on the Silk Road that linked ancient China, the Middle East and the Kievan Rus'. For three centuries (c. 650–965), the Khazars conquered the area from the Volga-Don steppes to Crimea and the Caucasus.

Khazaria was located between the Byzantine Empire, the steppe nomads and the Umayyad Caliphate. It helped the Byzantines defend itself from the Sasanian Persian empire. The alliance ended around 900. Between 965 and 969, the Kievan Rus replaced Khazaria.

Name

Khazar or Xazar may have come from *Qasar. The Turkic root qaz- means "to ramble, to roam" (used in Qazaqsa or Kazakh), similar to the Common Turkic kez-.

Some claimed that it came from qas- ("tyrannize, oppress, terrorize") because it is similar to the Uyghur name Qasar. Others see it as a person or tribe's name. For instance, the Chinese name Kesa for Khazars may be one of the tribal names of the Uyğur Toquz Oğuz of the Göktürks, namely the Gésà.

However, others say Kesa was not a tribal name but the name of the chief of the Sijie (思結) tribe of the Toquz Oğuz. In Middle Chinese, the name Khazars always comes before the word Tūjué (Tūjué Kěsà bù: 突厥可薩部; Tūjué Hésà: 突厥曷薩). Khazar language is extinct, while modern Turkic languages still refer to the Caspian Sea as the Khazar Sea.

Religions

Tengrism might have been the main religion of the Khazars just as it was for the Huns and many other Turkic tribes, while Abrahamic religions were popular as well. The Khazar ruling class is said to have converted to Judaism.

Language

No known records of the Khazar language have survived. The state was multilingual and polyethnic. The ruling elite probably spoke an eastern dialect of Shaz Turkic. The ordinary people may have spoken Lir Turkic, such as Oğuric, Bulğaric, Chuvash, and Hunnish. The Persian historian al-Iṣṭakhrī said that the Khazar language was different from any other known language. After some Khazars became Jewish, they may have written in the Hebrew alphabet, if Ibn al-Nadīm told the truth. Though they spoke a Türkic language, they might have also spoken Hebrew.

History

Origin

They appear to have come from Mongolia (蒙古) or northern China after the Xiōngnú (Huns)[dubious – discuss] were defeated by Han dynasty (漢朝) of China (Han–Xiongnu war). The tribes probably had Iranian, proto-Mongolic, Uralic and Palaeo-Siberians. The Turkic tribes might have conquered the Western Eurasian steppe as early as 463. In 552, they conquered the Rouran Khaganate (柔然汗國) and moved westwards, taking more people from Sogdia.

The ruling family might have come from the Āshǐnà (阿史那) clan of the West Türkic (西突厥) tribes. The Chinese and Arabic records are almost identical, indicating strong support for this theory. The leader might have been associated with Yǐpíshèkuì (乙毗射匱). He died around 651. Moving west, the Khazars reached Akatziroi, one of the important friends of Byzantium fighting Attila's army.

Khazaria

Khazaria is said to have emerged after 630. It is said to have come from the Göktürk Qağanate following their defeat by the Tang Dynasty (唐朝) between 630 and 650. The Göktürk armies conquered Volga by 549. The Āshǐnà clan whose tribal name was 'Türk' (the strong one) arrived in 552. They overthrew the Rourans and created the Göktürk Qağanate.

War with Tang Dynasty

The Chinese Tang Dynasty defeated the Turkic Qağanate and set up the Anxi protectorate (安西都護府) in Central Asia. The Khaganate split into several tribes. Some tribes went west to the Sea of Azov area. Ashina and the Khazars went further west. In 657, General Sū Dìngfāng (蘇定方) dominated the Turks and Central Asia. They imposed Chinese overlordship to the east of those Turkic tribes. In 659 the Chinese defeated the remaining tribes. The Khazars did not dare return.

War with Bulgars

Instead, the Khazars defeated the Bulgars further west. The Khazars Khaganate was then founded from the ruins of a nomadic empire destroyed by the Tang armies to the east, becoming the westernmost successor state of the Göktürks.

Later conquests

The Khazars conquered the lower Volga region and the area between the Danube and the Dniepr. In 670, they also conquered the Onoğur-Bulğar union and made the Onogur-Bulgar language the official language of the empire.

Khazar Empire

The empire is sometimes popularly called a steppe Atlantis. Historians often refer to this period as Pax Khazarica, which means "Khazarian peace" in Latin. The state became an international center of trade.

Modern period

Despite the disappearance of the Khazars from history, theories about the Cossacks, Muslim Kumyks, Kazakhs, Crimean Karaites, Krymchaks, and Ashkenazi Jews having descended from the Khazars are widely circulated. Most scholars of history and languages disagree with such theories. Particularly, the claim that Ashkenazi Jews mostly or only descended from the Khazars is known as the Khazar myth, which has been disproven by decades of peer-reviewed genetic research that has found no scientific evidence for the claim.

References

  1. ↑ Mason, Richard A. E. (Winter 1995). "The Religious Beliefs of the Khazars". The Ukrainian Quarterly. 51 (4): 383–415.
  2. ↑ Feldman, Alex M. (2022). "The Monotheisation of Khazaria". The Monotheisation of Pontic-Caspian Eurasia: From the Eighth to the Thirteenth Century. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-1474478113.
  3. ↑ Brook, Kevin A. (2018). The Jews of Khazaria (3rd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. pp. 39–41. ISBN 978-1-5381-0342-5.
  4. ↑ Brook, Kevin A. (2018). The Jews of Khazaria (3rd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 52. ISBN 978-1-5381-0342-5.
  5. ↑ Brook, Kevin A. (2018). The Jews of Khazaria (3rd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 20, 30–31, 39, 48, 52–53, 113. ISBN 978-1-5381-0342-5.
  6. ↑ Brook, Kevin A. (2018). The Jews of Khazaria (3rd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 100. ISBN 978-1-5381-0342-5.
  7. ↑ Turchin, Peter; Adams, Jonathan M.; Hall, Thomas D (December 2006). "East-West Orientation of Historical Empires". Journal of World-systems Research. 12 (2): 222. ISSN 1076-156X. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
  8. ↑ Rein Taagepera (September 1997). "Expansion and Contraction Patterns of Large Polities: Context for Russia". International Studies Quarterly. 41 (3): 496. doi:10.1111/0020-8833.00053. JSTOR 2600793.
  9. ↑ Herlihy 1972, pp. 136–148;Russell1972, pp. 25–71. This figure has been calculated on the basis of the data in both Herlihy and Russell's work.
  10. ↑ "Khazar | people". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2018-07-30.
  11. ↑ Sneath 2007
  12. 1 2 3 Noonan 1999
  13. ↑ Golden 2011
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Golden 2007a
  15. ↑ Golden 2007a citing L. Bazin, 'Pour une nouvelle hypothèse sur l'origine des Khazar,' in Materialia Turcica, 7/8 (1981–1982): 51–71.
  16. ↑ Dunlop 1954
  17. ↑ Golden 2007a. Kěsà (可薩) would have been pronounced as something like kha'sat in both Early Middle Chinese (EMC) and Late Middle Chinese (LMC), while Hésà (曷薩) would yield γat-sat in (EMC) and xɦat sat (LMC) respectively, where final t often transcribes –r- in foreign words. Thus, while these Chinese forms[clarification needed] could transcribe a foreign word of the type *Kasar/*Kazar, *Gatsar, *Gazr, *Gasar, there is a problem phonetically with assimilating these to the Uyğur word Qasar/ Gesa (EMC/LMC Kat-sat= Kar sar= *Kasar).
  18. ↑ Shirota 2005
  19. ↑ Brook 2010
  20. ↑ Brook, Kevin A. (2018). "Chapter 6: The Khazars' Conversion to Judaism". The Jews of Khazaria (3rd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 978-1-5381-0342-5.
  21. ↑ Erdal 2007.'there must have been many different ethnic groups within the Khazar realm ... These groups spoke different languages, some of them no doubt belonging to the Indo-European or different Caucasian language families.'. The high chancery official of the Abbasid Caliphate under Al-Wathiq, Sallām the interpreter (Sallam al-tardjuman), famous for his reputed mastery of thirty languages, might have been both Jewish and a Khazar.Wasserstein 2007 referring to.Dunlop 1954
  22. ↑ Golden 2006.'Oğuric Turkic, spoken by many of the subject tribes, doubtless, was one of the linguae francae of the state. Alano-As was also widely spoken. Eastern Common Turkic, the language of the royal house and its core tribes, in all likelihood remained the language of the ruling elite in the same way that Mongol continued to be used by the rulers of the Golden Horde, alongside of the Qipčaq Turkic speech spoken by the bulk of the Turkic tribesmen that constituted the military force of this part of the Činggisid empire. Similarity, Oğuric, like Qipčaq Turkic in the Jočid realm, functioned as one of the languages of government.'
  23. ↑ Golden 2007a. al-Iṣṭakhrī 's account however then contradicts itself by likening the language to Bulğaric.
  24. ↑ Golden, Peter B. (2007). "The Conversion of the Khazars to Judaism". The World of the Khazars: New Perspectives - Selected Papers from the Jerusalem 1999 International Khazar Colloquium. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers. p. 148. ISBN 978-9004160422.
  25. ↑ Erdal, Marcel (2007). "The Khazar Language". The World of the Khazars: New Perspectives - Selected Papers from the Jerusalem 1999 International Khazar Colloquium. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers. pp. 98–99. ISBN 978-9004160422. The chancellery of the Jewish state of the Khazars is therefore also likely to have used Hebrew writing even if the official language was a Turkic one.
  26. ↑ Golden 2007a;Brook 2010 note that Dieter Ludwig, in his doctoral thesis Struktur und Gesellschaft des Chazaren-Reiches im Licht der schriftlichen Quellen, (Münster,1982) suggested that the Khazars were Turkic members of the Hephthalite Empire, where the lingua franca consisted of a variety of Iranian.
  27. ↑ Szádeczky-Kardoss 1994
  28. 1 2 3 4 Golden 2006
  29. ↑ Golden 2006. In this view, the name Khazar would derive from a hypothetical *Aq Qasar.
  30. ↑ Kaegi 2003, citing also Golden 1992
  31. ↑ Whittow 1996. The word Türk, Whittow adds, had no strict ethnic meaning at the time: 'Throughout the early middle ages on the Eurasian steppes, the term 'Turk' may or may not imply membership of the ethnic group of Turkic peoples, but it does always mean at least some awareness and acceptance of the traditions and ideology of the Gök Türk empire, and a share, however distant, in the political and cultural inheritance of that state.'
  32. ↑ Golden 2010 The Duōlù (咄陸) were the left wing of the On Oq, the Nǔshībì (弩失畢: *Nu Šad(a)pit), and together they were registered in ancient Chinese sources as ten names (shí míng: 十名).
  33. ↑ Golden 2001b
  34. ↑ Somogyi 2008
  35. ↑ Zuckerman, Constantine (2007). "The Khazars and Byzantium: The First Encounter". The World of the Khazars: New Perspectives - Selected Papers from the Jerusalem 1999 International Khazar Colloquium. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers. p. 417. ISBN 978-9004160422.
  36. ↑ Golden, Peter B. (2007). "Khazar Studies: Achievements and Perspectives". The World of the Khazars: New Perspectives - Selected Papers from the Jerusalem 1999 International Khazar Colloquium. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers. pp. 11–13. ISBN 978-9004160422.
  37. ↑ Noonan 2001.
  38. ↑ Kohut, Zenon E. (2025). The Making of Cossack Ukraine: Political Thought, Culture, and Identity Formation, 1569-1714. McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 9780228019015.
  39. ↑ Kizilov, Mikhail (2026). "The Thirteenth Tribe: The Imaginary Legacy of the Khazars". In Bruder, Edith (ed.). Jews from Elsewhere: Forgotten Diasporas and Singular Jewish Identities. Oxford University Press. p. 169. doi:10.1093/9780197750957.003.0025. ISBN 9780197750926.
  40. ↑ Howorth, Henry Hoyle (1878). The Khazars: Were they Ugrians or Turks?. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill. p. 14.
  41. ↑ Kizilov, Mikhail (2009). The Karaites of Galicia: An Ethnoreligious Minority Among the Ashkenazim, the Turks, and the Slavs, 1772-1945. Brill. ISBN 978-90-47-44288-2.
  42. ↑ Kizilov, Mikhail (2026). "The Thirteenth Tribe: The Imaginary Legacy of the Khazars". In Bruder, Edith (ed.). Jews from Elsewhere: Forgotten Diasporas and Singular Jewish Identities. Oxford University Press. pp. 173–176. doi:10.1093/9780197750957.003.0025. ISBN 9780197750926.
  43. ↑ Yarmolinsky, Avrahm (1928). The Jews and Other Minor Nationalities Under the Soviets. New York: Vanguard Press. p. 36.
  44. ↑ Kizilov, Mikhail (2026). "The Thirteenth Tribe: The Imaginary Legacy of the Khazars". In Bruder, Edith (ed.). Jews from Elsewhere: Forgotten Diasporas and Singular Jewish Identities. Oxford University Press. p. 178. doi:10.1093/9780197750957.003.0025. ISBN 9780197750926.
  45. ↑ Kizilov, Mikhail (2026). "The Thirteenth Tribe: The Imaginary Legacy of the Khazars". In Bruder, Edith (ed.). Jews from Elsewhere: Forgotten Diasporas and Singular Jewish Identities. Oxford University Press. pp. 179–181. doi:10.1093/9780197750957.003.0025. ISBN 9780197750926.
  46. ↑ Patai, Raphael; Patai, Jennifer (1989). The Myth of the Jewish Race (revised ed.). Wayne State University Press. pp. 70, 72. ISBN 978-0814319499.
  47. ↑ Beider, Alexander (2017). "Ashkenazi Jews Are Not Khazars. Here's The Proof". Forward. Retrieved 1 January 2019.
  48. ↑ Shapira, Dan (2005). "A Jewish Pan-Turkist: Seraya Szapszał (Şapşaloğlu) and His Work 'Qırım Qaray Türkleri' (1928)". Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae. 58 (4): 349–380. doi:10.1556/AOrient.58.2005.4.3.
  49. ↑
    • Vogt 1975
    • Davies 1992
    • Wexler 2002: "Most scholars are sceptical about the hypothesis (that has its roots in the late 19th century) that Khazars became a major component in the ethnogenesis of the Ashkenazic Jews."
    • Rubin 2013
  50. ↑ Chazan, Robert (2007). The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom: 1000-1500. Cambridge University Press. pp. 202–203.
  51. ↑ Behar, Doron M.; et al. (December 2013). "No Evidence from Genome-Wide Data of a Khazar Origin for the Ashkenazi Jews". Human Biology. 85 (6): 859–900. doi:10.3378/027.085.0604. PMID 25079123.
  52. ↑ Kopelman NM, Stone L, Wang C, Gefel D, Feldman MW, Hillel J, Rosenberg NA (December 2009). "Genomic microsatellites identify shared Jewish ancestry intermediate between Middle Eastern and European populations". BMC Genetics. 10 80. doi:10.1186/1471-2156-10-80. PMC 2797531. PMID 19995433.
  53. ↑ Flegontov P, Kassian A, Thomas MG, Fedchenko V, Changmai P, Starostin G (August 2016). "Pitfalls of the Geographic Population Structure (GPS) Approach Applied to Human Genetic History: A Case Study of Ashkenazi Jews". Genome Biology and Evolution. 8 (7): 2259–2265. doi:10.1093/gbe/evw162. PMC 4987117. PMID 27389685.
  54. ↑ Waldman, Shamam; et al. (November 30, 2022). "Genome-wide data from medieval German Jews show that the Ashkenazi founder event pre-dated the 14th century". Cell. 185 (25): Supplemental Data S1, pp. 2, 26. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2022.11.002. PMC 9793425. PMID 36455558.
  55. ↑ Brook, Kevin A. (2022). The Maternal Genetic Lineages of Ashkenazic Jews. Academic Studies Press. pp. 7, 17, 85–86, 141. doi:10.2307/j.ctv33mgbcn. ISBN 978-1644699843.